In December I predicted that over the next 5 years we would see intranets begin to integrate with social networks. I’ve seen some signs recently that this might take longer than I anticipated (but trust me it will happen).

The intranet is a metaphor for corporate control.

Intranets are secure networks of communication. Employees can safely share information, trusting that it won’t find its way out into untrustworthy hands. With the exception of email sent outside the network almost all communication stays behind the firewall. The firewall works both ways to keep information in and information out. Intranets are siloed and, as they exist today, make it difficult to share information across a company. Just over 10 years ago the Cluetrain Manifesto hypothesized:

the cluetrain manifesto

Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It’s going to cause real pain to tear those walls down. But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in.

Social media tools have shown an incredible ability to tear down those walls. This has caused a lot of pain and consternation among executives. My last post covered a disturbing email I received from a friend of mine in the financial sector that was being forced to delete their LinkedIn profile because it was considered an individual, professional website.

On the WE Studio D Thinkers and Doers blog I also posted about Forrester forcing all of their employees to shut down their personal blogs if they overlapped with their area of focus at Forrester and would only be allowed to blog about that topic on the forthcoming Forrester blog.

What we are witnessing is the corporate extension of the “firewall” into social media. While this is not an actual firewall it is the way companies are trying to control what would normally happen within or through their firewall.

Shel Holtz has started the Stop Blocking blog to address the problems employees face when their employers flex their firewalls to stop employees from accessing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. With the ever increasing capabilities to access these sites via mobile phone that just seems ridiculous. You can’t stop my smart phone, even if I am at work.

All of this seems like a sad attempt to stop the inevitable. Why not work with your employees to reach a win-win instead of trying to stifle them? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

I received a disturbing email from a friend of mine. I have changed the message and obscured any personal or employer reference for obvious reasons.

Due to the recent FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc) ruling (see below) I will have to take down my LinkedIn profile. The finance industry is so far behind the curve on social media communications it may be a while before my profile is back. In the meantime, feel free to contact me via e-mail or on Facebook (while I can still use it!).

The FINRA has released it’s first member firm communication relative to regulatory treatment of social media communications. Regulatory Notice 10-06, emphasized that all broker-dealer business communications taking place through social networking Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn are indeed official communications with the public and are subject to all corresponding FINRA supervisory requirements. This Regulatory Notice confirmed that a profile page on LinkedIn is considered an individual registered representative web site

The FINRA does not make the rules. They provide guidance and the individual firms have to create rules based on those recommendations. There’s a lot of room for interpretation. It turns out that while some firms allow for individual representative websites some do not. My friend’s firm obviously does not. I asked another friend in the financial industry on their thoughts (also changed and held anonymously).

My opinion is simple, if you don’t have confidence in the people you hire to deliver the message and give people appropriate information whether on or off the clock then you have hired the wrong people. Our job is rather simple, but most advisers are too lazy to stay well read because all they see is money(commissions) thus it’s easier for companies to just control what their employee’s say.

I have read through the 10-06 document and can’t find any specific recommendations for Facebook vs. LinkedIn. I can only assume that my friends firm determined that LinkedIn is a more professional network and Facebook is more personal. It will be interesting to see how they react as our personal/professional lives continue to converge.

Ars Technica has a good post explaining more details on FINRA 10-06: Brokers must think twice before tweeting, Facebooking

The new guidelines have two broad effects on the way financial firms use social media. First, the new rules attempt to take the traditional distinction between marketing a brand and hawking specific investment products, and to enforce it in online venues that sport a constantly evolving slate of features and functionality, and where the lines between the personal and the professional—or, the personal and the promotional—aren’t always clear.

Has anyone else been effected by this new ruling? Let me know: tac [at] newcommbiz [dot] com.

I think it’s going to be really important to watch, especially as other regulated industries have yet to make up their minds. I’m afraid we’re beginning to see a general backlash against social media by companies unsure what to do with it.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Play On

As a proud member of Gen X I have fond memories of my Atari 2600.If you are reading this chances are you had an Atari, Nintendo 64 or Sega Genesis and chances are even greater you have an Xbox, Wii or Sony Play Station in your home right now. In fact to carry this even further, you are also likely to have an iPod or iPhone loaded with several games.

Gaming is a huge industry. But social media can thank much of it’s growth to gaming.

I’m not just talking about all the Farmville, Mafia Wars, sheep throwing, super poking and other plagues that roam Facebook.Social networks are filled with gaming components. The most obvious is Four Square with it’s points, badges and unelected mayors.

LinkedIn was the first time I noticed it with it’s profile status bar. If you remember back to when you first signed up there was a status bar that gave you a percentage of completion and next steps to improve your level of completion.Add a photo, invite friends, fill in job history, etc. The annoying thing was that I knew I was being gamed but I did it anyway.

Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

But there are even less obvious forms of gaming. Why do people care about their Twitter follower count? We don’t really care how many people are following us. It’s nice affirmation and all but really it taps into that deep seeded, primal urge that games satisfies for us.

We watch how many followers we have, we watch haw many RT’s we get and how many replies to questions we ask, just like we watch how many coins we collect or aliens we kill.

Business Need to Play More games

One thing that strikes me as a huge opportunity is to more overtly build gaming qualities into business software.

The biggest problem with CRM software is that sales people don’t enter the needed information in. Taking this thread to the extreme and knowing sales people and their uber competitive nature, what if each lead was a kill and all additional information under that kill determined the value of the kill. You would also need a constant leader board that sales people would check daily (I promise many of them will check it multiple times a day). You could also make a kill list out of your target customers and offer bounties for special targets.

While this is an extreme example that could potentially cause some perception problems, I promise that this would be the most successful CRM system out there.

The Future Will Be One Big Game

With the advent of Augmented Reality we will quickly move from AR games on our phones to AR glasses to everything being one big game.

[Prediction] By 2020 games will be the next social networking. Not games like we think if them today but systems that work off the same gaming theories. There will be gaming communities that dwarf Facebook and challenge Google and Microsoft for time spent, functionality, marketing dollars and developers.

I’ve been playing around with Facebook. Both how to promote brands on Facebook as well as how users consume content within the walled garden (hint: there’s a direct correlation between the two).

As blogs and media networks extend their reach using Facebook Pages, I noticed something interesting:

Facebook can be used as an RSS reader.

Most people don’t use the groups feature enough but it’s just like using Twitter lists, except you can’t share them. I’ve set up one just for the blogs I follow on Facebook.

It’s like a more graphical version of Google Reader with the shared and comments view shown in the collapsed mode.From here users can like or comment on any post or click through to the expanded “notes” view.

Facebook is a growing source of news for most people. While the geeks among us may still prefer RSS or Twitter your average user will follow a fan page before they subscribe to an RSS feed.  I’ve written about a study showing that Facebook members use the social network as a growing source of tech news.

(BTW, feel free to join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page.)

Over on the Facebook blog, Malorie Lucich, has a post about how she’s seeing the rise of Facebook as a news source Creating Your Personalized News Channel.

When the earthquake hit Haiti, victims in the area, news affiliates and people around the world used Facebook to learn what was happening, connect with loved ones and quickly disseminate information. ABCNews.com and France 24 added Facebook live stream boxes to their sites to enable people to share their feelings on the disaster and relief efforts, and publish it back to their Facebook status. Meanwhile, The New York Times created a special Facebook Page dedicated to Haiti coverage, resources and updates from their reporters on the ground.

Malorie then recommends building a group of just the news sources you follow to clear the clutter. The next step in Facebook’s twitterfication will be to make these lists shareable. Facebook could also further this adoption by mimicking Twitter’s now dead, Suggested User List and have a recommended group that people could follow or even recommended groups by category. Companies would pay millions for that kind of reach.

As this kind of use on Facebook grows your Facebook fan numbers could easily eclipse your RSS subscriber numbers. This also poses an interesting challenge for publishers hiding their content behind pay wall or a unique partnership opportunity, depending on how they approach it.

Update: Marshall Kirkpatrick just posted a very similar post on ReadWriteWeb:

Facebook Could Become World’s Leading News Reader (Sorry Google)

Services like MyYahoo and iGoogle saw some traction and many readers here may have a Google Reader account, but dedicated RSS (really simple syndication) feed reading services have never lived up to their potential to become a mainstream phenomenon. These days many people say they just wait until links get shared on Twitter and they never use a feed reader at all. Late last week Facebook threw its hat in the ring and called on users to use its service as a news feed reader. There are a number of reasons why Facebook could be the strongest online subscription option yet.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Josh Bernoff has been posting lately on the demise of the Golden Age of the Internet and rise of the Splinternet.

The Splinternet means the end of the Web’s golden age

Now with iPhones, Androids, Kindles, Tablets, and TVs connecting to the Web, that’s not true. Your site may not work right on these devices, especially if it includes flash or assumes mouse-based navigation. Apps that work on the iPhone don’t work on the Android. Widgets for FiOS TV don’t work anywhere else.

Meanwhile, more and more of the interesting stuff on the Web is hidden behind a login and password. Take Facebook for example. Not only do its applications not work anywhere else, Google can’t see most of it. And News Corp. and the New York Times are talking about putting more and more content behind a login.

Web marketing has grown since 1995, based on the idea that everything is connected. Click-throughs, ad networks, analytics, search-engine optimization — it all works because the Web is standardized. Google works because the Web is standardized.

Not any more. Each new device has its own ad networks, format, and technology. Each new social site has its login and many hide content from search engines.

Josh also has an updated post declaring proof of the Splinternet. He doesn’t so much offer proof of the Splinternet’s existence but more of a hypothetical index that allows you check your own Web stats for the fragmentation he’s mentioning.

Josh’s index is good if you’re a webmaster or Web marketer with access your analytics. But your average tech geek need to look no further that your iPhone. That very device which has fuled the rise of the Splinternet like no other.

Behold the Splinternet in the wild:

The Splinternet

News allerts, missed calls, email, And this is just my iPhone 3GS. On my Windows Mobile, HTC Touch Pro2 I have my work email, other voice messages, missed calls and text messages. On my HTC, MyTouch 3G with Google other apps that need updating, the same Twitter, Facebook and Brightkite  messages as well as GTalk IM messages waiting for me.

Each one of those messages sends alerts, notifications to multiple “inboxes” but all of them can only be managed in their proprietary walled garden.

Have you spotted the Splinternet in the wild?

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

There were two seemingly unrelated news stories this past week: 1. Apple’s new iPad, and 2. that lucky dog rescued from an ice floe in the Baltic Sea after drifting for over 100 miles. (Ice Station Zebra, the spy thriller yarn with a story centered around the ice of the North Pole was also on TV this week, which is relevant in a way too.)

Here’s the connection:

We are all living & working on ice floes, super wide ice floes that define our trends, generations, and zeitgeist. The floes are so big and contain so much on the surface that we can’t tell we’re moving UNLESS we pay really-really close attention to their incremental shifts by perceiving the low rumblings of the currents below the ice. I believe this is why the world requires consultants and strategists and why (even though I myself am a strategist/consultant and might sound like I’m tooting horns) their enterprises are immensely productive. Objectivity is the ROI of listening deeply. If you’re not listening deeply, you might miss the shift in currents and become stranded on a sliver of ice far beyond the horizon in the Baltic sea.

Apple is a master navigator of ice floes, but in truth they are fighting handily to stand still. They have found the “confluential” spot in the water, a magnetic pole, where the cultural forces of price-point, want, demand, luster, and design meet and form a robust wellspring. In 2007 they planted a flag in the floe above this magnetic spot and announced, “the iPhone is here! It’s the most important device of all history!” and sold a billion-trillion units. Immediately the floe shifted, and the iPhone was no longer the most important device. But floes move slowly, so Apple had the time to capitalize on their new product. As the floe continued on its path down current, pulled by forces of economics, necessity, bubbles, and nature, new versions of the iPhone were launched, and software updated, but Apple was sliding away from the wellspring. The Apple navigators went to work to keep their crew above that pole. They trudged through the ice, climbed a few bergs (from the top of one they looked over their shoulders and saw the jagged line of their former flag-plantings poking out from the snow, all the way back to the Apple IIc) and then turned their vibrant faces to the future and hiked it back to that confluential spot. This week, they arrived. Boom! A new flag planted in the ice! “The iPad is the most important device of all time!…”

You get my drift (all puns intended).

You can find these floe-navigators in many arenas. As an example, 80’s pop star Matthew Wilder (Break my stride, 1983) produced No Doubt’s 16-million-unit selling record Tragic Kingdom (1995) and recently worked with Miley Cyrus. He’s hovering over the wellspring of teen angst, clear diction, catchiness and a whole lot of revenues.

Many consultants will suggest that businesses need to be remarkable, or to resonate, or jump to the next curve. All are true and are immensely helpful bits of advice. But the above describes a specific, more intense, approach that I suggest you take as well.

Realize you’re on an ice floe and listen very deeply. Then seek to find, and remain affixed to, the confluential spots below the ice.

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about this yet. Last year Alan Wolk asked me to be on the board for a new project he was working on, The Hive Awards. I loved the idea immediately and happily jumped on board.

The Hive Awards are designed to reward all the unsung heroes of the internet: the coders, programmers, user experience designers, content strategists, information architects, planners and the like: the people who innovate and create but rarely get the credit.

There is so much great work happening out there by the little dev shops that never get any attention. I’d love to see them get more love.

You can find out more here, see the categories here, read the blog here or see the other members of the board here.

The deadline has been extended to February 15th because a new Crowdsourcing category has been added.

The award ceremony will be held at SXSW on Friday the 12th and is going to be a blast, hope to see you there.

Follow the Hive Awards on Twitter and join the Facebook Page.

Two big news events happened yesterday: Steve Jobs announced the iPad and Barack Obama presented on the State of the Union.There was a lot of hype leading up to both and I imagine most of the planet was aware of both.

Image via CrunchBase

Both men are excellent presenters who command attention when they speak, but with two very different styles. There was a lot of global attention on both men and both had some high expectations to live up to.

No matter what you may personally think of either man, I think we can all agree they were both at peak presentation form yesterday.

I’m no where the level of Jobs or Obama. I prefer a more informal conversational tone but I’m always looking to these two for ways to improve.

Steve Jobs is known for his ability to weave a story and build suspense as he prepares to unveil a new product. Despite the let down most everyone felt about the iPad his presence was was no less disappointing.

Image via Wikipedia

Many have commented that Barack Obama was back to his pre-presidential best yesterday, reminding a nation why he was elected. Obama is no less the story teller that Jobs and I would argue even more so as he often weaves in analogies and diverse, real life stories to make his point. Obama’s only real fault is that he is never without the teleprompter. Which leads to the only criticism that it’s his writers that make him look so good.

Anyone who doesn’t think that Jobs or any CEO doesn’t have a speech writer has never spent anytime in corporate communications. The fact that Obama has writers and a teleprompter doesn’t detract from his ability to deliver the speech with poise and ability.

All waxing eloquent aside how did they do in the court of public opinion?

Wikio has recently released a new Wikio Labs product called Wikio Trends that allows you to compare individual mentions. So I plugged in Barack Obama and Steve Jobs:

While Obama has more mentions over a three month period (as he probably should) Jobs crushed him yesterday. There’s one big reason for this: Blogs are dominated by tech geeks. But I still expected it to be closer, there are, after all, a lot of political bloggers out there.

I imagine the real reason for this is because the State of the Union address was broadcast on every major station, including YouTube (yes I just called YouTube a major station). The Apple event was not live streamed but live blogged, meaning the mentiones pilled up in real time.

Did you watch both presentations? What did you think?

While @gearheadgal may never speak to me again my post from earlier this week, 3 Reasons Why Social Media is Killing Search, sparked some healthy debate. (BTW debate is a good thing, it’s healthy, respectful and we should all do it more.)

In my post I pointed to some recently reported trends that social media engagement is nearing search levels and given that many people use social networks to “find” recommendations, this will be very disruptive for search.

Google knows this and is responding: “Google Forming Social Web Team”

But Jeremy Meyers, Joe McCarthy and others helped qualify my claims in context of user behavior.

Joe McCarthy had a great response I thought was worth bringing to the surface of people who missed the comment thread.

I like your elevation of “curation”, and agree that social recommendation is an increasingly important component of discovering interesting and useful things online (very much in line with Jeremy Meyers’ distinction between search and discovery).

However, I hope that in the quest for innovation, search does not become overly influenced by social media usage. danah boyd posted an insightful piece a while back about valuing inefficiency and unreliability, in which she emphasized the value conferred by effort. It seems to me that many Twitter users tweet (or retweet) a link to a long article or story without reading it (completely), or tweet a link to a short summary of a longer essay … possibly drawn in by a catchy headline and/or an engaging first paragraph (and no, I won’t say anything more about headlines, given another thread in these comments .

My concern is that Twitter and other social media services are promoting a “snack culture”, and without search algorithms that are not [as heavily] influenced by the memes of the moment, our ability to find original sources – or insights and experiences that may not be currently trendy – may suffer.

As a potential analogy, I’m reminded of a study, Voting With Your Feet: An Investigative Study of the Relationship Between Place Visit Behavior and Preference, where Jon Froehlich and his colleagues found that the restaurants people visit most often do not correlate well with the restaurants they actually like or value the most … they are simply most convenient. There’s a place for convenience – online and offline – but I hope search innovations will not sacrifice breadth and depth for radical immediacy.

[Update] Joe left this comment with a link to additional thoughts on the original post:

…the commoditization of Twitter followers, where it provided a missing piece to tie together a few loose ends at the conclusion

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Image by Saurabh Goswami

You’ve all the heard the arguments about measuring social media:

How do you measure the ROI of your telephone?

Or my other favorite:

What’s the ROI of putting on your pants in the morning?

Seriously?

Man, this ain’t my social media, this is a cell phone. Duh!

The ROI of putting your pants on:

In all seriousness, having a phone at work and putting on your pants is a cost of business. At one time having phones at everyone’s desk was something that had to be justified. Now having a phone is a cost and managed accordingly. Do you really want social media to be managed by cost and not by return? Guess which gets more budgets?

BTW: Unless you work from home the ROI of putting on your pants should never have been a question.

The greater risk here is that the people who are resistance to measuring social media are well intentioned and for the most part “get” social media. While we’re sitting around debating the merits of measuring social media, marketers and advertisers are calculating the ROI of Facebook fans and followers.

Facebook Develops Conversion Tracking Tool: What’s A Fan Worth?

Boland also served up advice on how to calculate a cost-per-fan metric to determine the campaigns return on investment (ROI). Not only the cost to acquire a fan, but the fan’s worth.

If you walk into a meeting preaching that social media shouldn’t be measured because you decided to put on pants and the other group walks into the meeting showing the ROI of individual Facebook fans and the cost per acquisition, take a wild guess who’s going to get the budget and guess who’s going to loose their pants?

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